My Best Gift Ideas

I LOVE finding great products and I decided this year I'd round-up all the products I've recommended just in case you still need ideas for Christmas! ENJOY!

Why I'm raising my sons like daughters

Gloria Steinem recently posted her Christmas wish list. The list is fantastic, but one item really spoke to me as the mom of three boys. 

“I’m glad we’ve begun to raise our daughters more like our sons – but it will never work until we raise our sons more like our daughters.”

The societal expectations placed upon little girls are far from perfect. Women are expected to beautiful and nice and never, ever bossy. However, we’ve come a very, very long way from the 1950’s when getting married and raising a family were the only real life goals presented to women.

I was raised to believe I could be whatever I wanted. I was praised for having big dreams in the traditionally male-dominated worlds of law and politics. 

The same is not true of little boys today.

Little boys are taught that certain dreams are off limits. Little boys are taught in a million ways that they can do whatever they want - as long as it’s not for girls. 

Amos loves nail polish but won’t wear it anymore because people (adults and children) have told him it’s for girls. Griffin loved My Little Ponies until he got the message that that show was for girls. I hear well-educated people tell me ALL THE TIME they wouldn’t let their son wear a certain shirt or participate in a certain activity because it was “girly.” 

Girly meaning bad. Girly meaning undesirable. Girly meaning less than.

This attitude is harmful not just to the little boys being subtly told that who they are and what they enjoy is not ok, BUT also to the little girls being subtly told that who they are and what they enjoy isn’t good enough for boys. 

I recently heard Anne-Marie Slaughter of Why Women Can’t Have It All fame on Freakonomics radio and I thought her insight into this issue was spot on.

“So here’s what I realized: I have two sons, and I looked at my sons and I thought, “You know, if I’d had a daughter we’d be raising her 100 percent differently than the way my mother was raised, and even differently than I was raised,” although my father was very progressive and he raised me to have a career. But if I looked at my sons, I thought, “I’m raising my sons pretty much exactly the way my father was raised.” I mean, we’re raising them to have a more active role as fathers. My father never changed a diaper. Certainly my husband changed plenty. And I expect my sons to. But we’re still saying to men, “Your worth in society is a function of your breadwinning. It’s a function of how much money you can make and how high you can rise in your career.” And that is a very limited set of choices. It’s the flip side of saying to women, when my mother was raised you know, “Your worth in society depends on can you get married and can you have children.” And my point is all of us should have access to both. As a woman I absolutely want to be able to compete. I want to have a career. That’s been fabulous. But I sure don’t want to do that at the expense of also being a mother and a wife and a sister and a daughter. And so, what I now say to my sons is, “If you believe in equality and you marry a woman or a man, whatever, and you believe that you’re going to support that woman’s career, then it may require you being the lead parent and your spouse to be the lead breadwinner.” And that’s been the situation in our marriage. And they understand that I couldn’t have a big career unless Andy played that role. So that’s the place where I’m really saying to men, if you believe in equality, it can’t be, “Okay, I believe in equality but I’m going to take every promotion I get, and if you get a promotion, I’m not going to move for you.”

— Anne-Marie Slaughter

When we tell little boys "girly" things are off limits, we're not just limiting the toys they can play with we are limiting the very path to their own self-determination and happiness. 

We have to raise little boys to believe that nurturing and primary caregiving are just as valuable as ambition and primary breadwinning. We have to teach them the only choice that has real value is the choice that will bring them personal fulfillment. 

It's hard. It's hard to undo what we've been taught. It's hard to look at our own choices and wonder whether we would have taken a different path had it been open for us. It's hard because raising children has as much to do with ourselves as it does with our kids.

But we have to try. Let your son paint his nails. Let your daughter cut her hair off. Tell your son he'll be a great father one day. Tell your daughter she'll be a great boss. We have to allow ourselves to be uncomfortable when our children push against societal expectations - even if they'll get teased. 

People tell me often I'm setting my children up to get teased. First of all, I haven't met a person yet who escaped childhood without confronting the cruelty of their peers. I prefer to teach my children to deal with teasing - not avoid it all costs. Second of all, I don't want to teach my children that they should alter their behavior based on the opinions of others. 

In an interview recently, Gloria Steinem said, "I hope that we will one day change society to fit the unique individual, not the unique individual to fit society, but we all are in this place, and we're all trying to find our own solutions, and we need to support each other in those solutions."

That's on my wishlist - for myself, for everyone, and ESPECIALLY for my boys.

I love my boys. I love every little thing that makes them uniquely them.

They can be whatever they want to be ... even girly. 

The EASIEST Winter Craft EVER!

You I've been wanting to make Borax Snowflakes forever. I wouldn't have put it off this long if I'd know HOW STINKING EASY IT IS!

Now, I did already have the Borax and pipe cleaners on hand but even if you don't that's a pretty short shopping list.

You simply use the pipe cleaners to twist up some snowflakes. 

Hang them inside a wide-mouthed jar. I didn't even use string.  I just kept one end of the pipe cleaner long and bent it around the pen I was using to hang it over the top of the jar. 

You boil one cup of water (or however much it takes to submerge your snowflake) and mix in 3 tablespoons of borax per cup. 

Let set overnight and BAM! crystal snowflakes!

You could use colored pipe cleaners. You could use food coloring in the water. The possibilities are endless, but the craft itself is SIMPLE!

So, how does it work? From Steve Spangler Science:

"You put a bunch of pipe cleaners that had been twisted into a snowflake shape into a solution of borax and water. How in the world did it turn into this beautiful crystal snowflake?

When you mixed the borax in with the water, you created a suspension. A suspension is a mixture that contains solid particles large enough to settle out. By mixing the borax into hot water, instead of room temperature or cold water, the borax stays suspended longer within the water.

As the borax begins to settle out, or sediment, it begins to crystallize. You’ll see this crystallization on both the bottom of the jar and, you got it, on your snowflake. The borax continues to sediment on top of the snowflake and on top of other borax crystals until you pull it out of the water the next morning."

Enjoy!

Why arguing about guns on Facebook made me more patriotic

I’ve been arguing about guns on Facebook for basically 48 hours straight.

What I’ve noticed is that after all the statistics and info graphs - after all the stories and anecdotes and emotions - the two sides seem to represent two world views.

Pro gun control: I believe the government can do something that will improve the situation and I want to try. The world is scary and I want laws to help make it less so.

Anti gun control: I do not believe the government can do anything to help and will most likely make it worse. I feel unsafe as well but government interference makes me feel even less so and I’d rather just defend myself.

Look. Both sides are valid. Both sides are little bit right. After all, government is just a reflection of ourselves - both our best AND our worst. Government can’t fix everything, but it’s not going to ruin everything either.

What I’ve also heard a lot from some of those opposed to legislation is that our country is getting worse and there’s nothing we can do about it. That America is some sort of lost cause. 

Now, THAT I do not agree with.

Are there real challenges and truly scary problems? Yes.

But I believe in the great American experiment. I believe I drink from a well I did not dig and that it is my duty and moral obligation to keep digging.

I just finished Sarah Vowell’s Lafayette in the Somewhat United States about the Revolutionary War and I'm sure Washington's barefoot soldiers wondered about the impact of marching line by line into the British army’s bayonets. I'm sure the abolitionist thought things were pretty dire in the face of an entire economy built on slavery. I'm sure Alice Paul felt despondent about the state of affairs when she was being force fed raw eggs. I'm sure the protestors on the bridge in Selma wondered if things were really going to change - if what they were doing was really going to make a difference. 

BUT IT DID.

I believe in us. I believe that we can figure this out and it won’t be easy and it won’t be perfect but it will be something.

We will disagree. We will argue. That after all is the real brilliance of this great experiment. 

One of my favorite parts of the Sarah Vowell’s book is the observation that it was the patriots ability to sit around and argue that basically led to the Revolution.

“Arendt suggests that the American colonists revolted ‘not because of any specifically revolutionary or rebellious spirit but because the inhabitants of the colonies’ benefited from - and here she cites John Adams - ‘ ‘the right to to assemble… in their town halls, there to deliberate upon the public affairs.’ ‘ The colonists, Arendt continues, ‘went to the town assemblies, as their representatives later were to go to the famous Conventions, neither exclusively because of duty nor, and even less, to serve their own interests but most of all because they enjoyed discussions, the deliberations, and the making of decisions.”

I’ve enjoyed the discussions and the deliberations in our virtual town hall. Sure, one person was mean but everyone else was thoughtful and insightful and civil and earnest - even with disagreeing passionately with me. 

But the discussion and deliberation can’t be the end of it.

We’re Americans. We act. 

We debate. We deliberate. One side backs down. The other side backs down. We reach a consensus and then we act. If that doesn’t work, we start all over again.

But we don’t give up. We don’t throw our hands in the air and surrender to problems seemingly too big to address. 

This is America. There is no such thing.

Over 500,000 people have been killed by a gun since Heath

Eighteen years ago, Michael Carneal came to my high school with two shotguns, two .22 rifles wrapped and a loaded pistol in his backpack. He then used the pistol to shoot and kill three of my classmates and injure five more. 

I've written before about my what happened to me that day.

When I think back to that day, I feel an immense amount of sadness. When I think of every day since that day, I feel an immense amount of rage. 

Since December 1, 1997, 331 people have died in a mass shooting in the United States. 

That's defining a mass shooting as the murder of more than four people - which wouldn't even have included Heath.

If you expand that definition to every life lost by an act of gun violence be it murder, suicide, accidental deaths, police intervention, or where the intent is unknown that number balloons to 31,537 people .... YEAR.

That means in the 18 years since my life was changed by gun violence 567,000 people have lost their lives and millions more have been forever changed. 

Over 50,000 of those who lost their lives were children.

HALF A MILLION PEOPLE. 50,000 kids. 

Those numbers are overwhelming. The violence is overwhelming. But we have to stop being overwhelmed.

We tiptoe around gun control. We argue that common sense gun control is all we need to make a difference and - believe me - I'm not arguing against the criminalization of assault weapons or closing the gun show loophole or even better mental health screening.

But the fact remains that the mentally ill are more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators and making changes at the margins is not going to put a dent in our country's gun problem. 

Our problem is WE HAVE TOO MANY GUNS.

More guns = more homicides.

More guns = more suicides. 

More guns = more death.

Somewhere along the way we have decided as a society that a person has the right to own as many guns as they want and, as a result, people have died. 

Now, if you believe that the loss of life is worth it. Fine. Then, let's have that debate, but I'm done pretending that 30,000 lives a year is the cost of being an American. I'm done pretending that more guns make us safer. I'm done pretending that one person's right to bear as many and whatever arms they want is more important than my right to the same level of safety enjoyed by people in other countries.

I'm done feeling my stomach drop when I hear of another damn shooting. I'm done with the prayers and the candles and the vigils. 

I just want to scream, "If you cared what happened to me and my classmates 18 years ago, THEN WHY HAVEN'T YOU DONE ANYTHING TO KEEP IT FROM HAPPENENING AGAIN!!!"

I want gun licensing. I want a gun registry. I want a mandatory gun buyback program that takes 20% of the guns off the street and destroys them.

I want big solutions that speak to the enormity of the suffering inflicted by gun violence.

And every year another December 1st rolls around and I look back on another year filled with shootings and death the madder I get. 

4 Items that make your home SMARTER and your life EASIER

This morning I stopped by News 3 This Morning to chat with Kevin Hunsperger about the latest in Smart Home technology. In the past couple of years, creating a connected home that uses technology to save you time, energy, and money has become all the rage. I decided to try out several of the newest innovations and report back!

WSIL-TV 3 Southern Illinois

Nest Learning Thermostat, 3rd Generation

A leader in smart home technology has been the company Nest, who "reinvent unloved but important home products." Founded in 2010 by two Apple engineers, they first introduced the Nest Learning Thermostat - a wifi-enabled thermostat that learns your schedule and adjusts the temperature in your home accordingly. 

We easily installed our Nest within minutes and were immediately impressed by the large and easy to read display screen. I particularly like Nest Leaf™ that appears on the screen when you turn Nest to a temperature that’s energy efficient. There's no guessing - just turn the dial until you see the leaf!

The Nest Learning Thermostat has been proven by third-party researchers to save people, on average, about 10 to 12 percent on their heating bills and about 15 percent on their cooling bills and pays for itself within two years.  We've already noticed  savings in our energy usage in only a few weeks. 

You can control your Nest from anywhere using your phone and set the thermostat to "away" for additional energy savings while you're gone. 

There are tons of rebates and rewards offered through local energy services depending on your area as well so click here to check your zip code. 

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Kwikset Kevo Smart Lock

My absolute favorite feature on our Prius was the smart lock. No digging for keys. Just touch the lock and you were in! Now, Kwikset has brought the same technology to your front door. For anyone like me, who struggles with carrying babies and groceries, the Kevo Smart Lock uses Bluetooth technology to turn your cell phone into an eKey  and unlocks the door with a touch!

Even better? You can set up temporary eKeys for babysitters, house cleaners, or dog walkers. There's a Bluetooth key fob for anyone without a compatible device and two traditional keys just in case. 

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Philips Hue

So, we've connected your thermostat and your front door - now what about your lights? Philips Hue is a connected light bulb that allows you to control your home lighting from a smartphone or tablet. With over 16 million color options, Hue can create the perfect tone to match your mood, decor or party theme. 

We have three lamps in our main family room so, on the most basic level, it's awesome to turn them all on or off by simply asking Siri to do so. We've also really enjoyed the different light recipes you can use based on whether you are reading, relaxing, or concentrating. 

You can even use a schedule to alert you to important events or flash when you receive an email or want a weather alert. 

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Amazon Echo

Amazon Echo was our first introduction to smart home technology. My father sent us one for an early Christmas and - at first - I was a little skeptical. We had Bluetooth speakers so I wasn't sure what the big deal was. 

However, Alexa (that's her name!) is so much better than a wireless speaker. She can set timers and order more toilet paper from Amazon and add items to your to-do list. (She can also control your Hue lights after a bit of setup). 

I mainly enjoy the Echo because it has brought music back into our home. We don't own a stereo anymore or a radio and I moved my computer back into our room. We could pair our phones with a speaker, but that's a little more trouble than I'm willing to go to. Now, I can simply ask Alexa to play NPR or our favorite kids music station and we're good to go!

I highly recommend any of these items for a unique Christmas present to anyone not intimidated by technology and looking to make their lives easier! 

This post contains affiliate links. 

Are you pregnant? This post is for you.

I get asked a lot of questions about parenting and birth. 5 pregnancies, 3 kids, 2 home births, 1 hospital birth, 1 miscarriage, and 1 pregnancy loss doesn't make me a doctor, but it does leave me with a special kind of expertise.

The kind of expertise that comes from having been there yourself!

So, if you're looking for answers or stories or someone to say, "Yep, that's normal!" Look no further! I've got over 22,000 hours of pregnancy experience. (Seriously, I did the math.)

To get you started, I've rounded up all my posts on my #1 favorite topic.

Pregnancy:

• Top 5 Pregnancy Must Haves
• My absolute favorite pregnancy book
• How to speak to a pregnant woman
• Second (or Third) Time Mommy Anxiety
• When are you done having kids?

Birth:

• I give birth at home.
• Griffin's Birth Story
• Amos's Birth Story
• Felix's Birth Story
• The Cost of a Home Birth
• Ashley Martin and "Picture Perfect Births"
• My Postpartum Paradise (or why you should always accept help after giving birth)

Struggling with gender disappointment?

• I am an urban legend.
• What having 3 boys means... and what it doesn't

Experiencing pregnancy after loss?

• Due Date
• I have an announcement.
• How I'm coping
• Litany of Remembrance
• Grief and the choices we make
• April 10-15, 2014

If you're overwhelmed or have already read yourself cross-eyed and just want to talk to an actual human being who's been there, then I'm offering up a new service. 

I'm all your's for a one-hour phone call or online chat. Ask me the questions you're too embarrassed to ask your girlfriends or mom or a parenting chat board! I've spent 1000 of hours researching the problems. I'm not going to tell you what to do. I'm going to help you find the solution!

Do you want to know more about my experience with home birth? (No, I didn't poop.) Do you want to know what baby products really belong on your registry? Do you want to know what I did to prepare for breastfeeding?

I'm not a doctor and (obviously) I won't be offering medical advice, but I do consider myself particularly good at practical help and emotional support.

And if I can't help you, I'll find someone or some resource that can!

For $100 investment (you cant barely get a stroller for that much!), I'm all your's. 

So, give me a call!

Welcome back Dixie Chicks

At the Top of the World tour

The first time I heard "I Can Love You Better". I was riding home with a friend when it came on the radio and I asked who it was.

The Dixie Chicks.

The name. The sound. The unapologetic fun.

I went to Walmart the next day and bought Wide Open Spaces... on cassette tape.

I knew the words to every song within a week and can still sing them in my sleep. I sang the title track all the way to college.

She needs wide open spaces ... room to make her big mistakes. 

It was my anthem - probably always will be - along with every other Southern girl who graduated from high school in the late 90s.

Fly was no different and quickly becoming the soundtrack of my life. I still remember my high school boyfriend yelling for me to "come listen to this song!" the first time we played Goodbye Earl. I also remember my college rebound from aforementioned high school boyfriend declaring Cowboy Take Me Away as "our song."

I've seen The Dixie Chicks in concert four times and on every tour. The Fly Tour by myself my freshman year because I didn't have a lot of friends yet. The Top of the World Tour (post-controversy) my senior year with a group of now lifelong friends.

The controversy was still fresh and I remember girls younger than me holding neon pink signs that declared "Natalie for president." I had written an editorial for my college paper arguing that no one should care about the group's political beliefs because they were "just" musicians.

Looking back it wasn't how I really felt, but I thought it was my strongest argument and I wanted everyone to just leave. my chicks. alone.

I was young and I wanted everything to go back to the way it was. When the Chicks were triumphant and the world was full of promise.

I got married. I went to law school. My life got more complex, but things change and things stay the same - when Taking the Long Way came out I loved it without reservation.

My husband and I bought tickets to see the Chicks in Philly. When Natalie performed Not Ready to make Nice, I thought my skin was going to jump off my body her emotion was so electric. I had not and have not experienced anything at a concert like that performance.

When the documentary Shut Up and Sing came out, I felt validated in the love I had devoted to these three women from the beginning.

They were brave and funny and smart and they loved each other unconditionally.

I would be lying if I said I didn't want more Dixie Chicks music. I do.

I bought the Courtyard Hounds album and loved it. Mother is insanely good.

Still, those three voices only tug a certain string in my heart when they join together in harmony.

And - sweet baby Jesus - it looks like that harmony is hitting the states next summer.

Welcome back, girls. My life has changed ALOT in the past ten years, but my devotion to you hasn't. 

I cannot WAIT.